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Thursday, March 17, 2016

How Trump will get the Post-March 15 Delegates He Needs to Win the GOP Nomination

As of March 15,
Donald Trump has gained 693 of the 1,237 delegates he’ll need to win the
Republican presidential nomination, putting him 544 delegates short of his
goal. With only 1,041 delegates still up
for grabs, he’ll have to win at least 53% of the remaining delegates before he
can grab the nomination. How can he do
it?

I poured over
many opinion polls and finally settled on an on-line polling site called
isidewith.com. Isidewith.com has two
major advantages: It’s fairly consistent with other polls, and—unlike other
polls—it’s updated every few minutes.

The chart you
see below was actually my working paper; but I saw no reason to redo it. If you find any errors,
please let me know. Now let’s jump into
my findings.

(Click image for full-size image)

As I said, Trump
has already won 693 of the 1,237 delegates he needs to win (Source: Wikipedia),
which puts him 544 delegates away from his goal.

First let’s look
at the winner-take-all
(with no ifs, ands, or buts) states.
Even in a three-way race, Trump enjoys double-digit leads in all five
winner-take-all states for which polling data are available. The only polling data of any kind I can find
for South Dakota* (with 29 winner-take-all delegates) includes Democrats,
Republicans, candidates, and former candidates.) Here are the five states, with their number
of delegates in parentheses: Arizona (58), Indiana (57), Nebraska (36), Montana
(27), and New Jersey (51).

Those five
states will likely give Trump 229 delegates.
By the math, this puts Trump 315 delegates away from his goal. Subtracting 229 from the 1,041 delegates
still up for grabs, Trump has to get only 39% of the remaining 812 delegates.

Now let’s look
at the states where delegates are winner-take-all if the winner gets more than
50% of the vote (otherwise, delegates are allotted proportionally.) They are Utah (40) and Connecticut (28). Probably no one will get 50% of the vote in Utah,
so I’m calculating that Trump will get at least 16 of Utah’s 40 delegates. He’ll take all of Connecticut’s 28
delegates. These 44 delegates will put
Trump 271 delegates away from his goal.

Now let’s look
at the three states that will allocate delegates proportionally. They are Oregon (28), Washington (44, but
only to candidates with 20% or more of the vote), and New Mexico (24). I calculate that Trump will win 16 delegates
in Oregon, 23 in Washington, and 13 in New Mexico, for a total of 52 delegates,
putting him 219 delegates away from his goal.

Finally, setting
aside Colorado’s 37 “unbound” delegates (the mention of which recalls bitter
memories of the disgraceful behavior of party leaders at the 2012 (or was it 2008?) convention), let’s
look at the winner-take-all (split) states.
Some are a combination of winner-take-all and proportional (WTA/). They are Wisconsin (42), New York (95),
Maryland (38), Pennsylvania (71), and West Virginia (34). In California (172), congressional districts
are winner-take-all (WTA/CD). Together,
these six states will send 452 delegates to the National GOP Convention this
summer.

In this final
category of states, it’s not possible for me to calculate just how many delegates
Trump will win, but it looks promising for the Donald. Donald Trump enjoys double-digit leads in all
six winner-take-all (split) states. Unless
he (as he once suggested) stands in the middle of Times Square and shoots
somebody, he’ll get at least half these 452 delegates, which should be more
than he needs to get the nomination. He’ll
probably get much more than that.